dear chuck and jeff,
sure enough -- no need to object, chuck -- flow, as defined, presupposes
previous experiences, possibly acquired with great effort, mastery, as chuck
said. but what (logically) presupposes and (temporally) precedes C is not C
and should not be confused with the experiences while in C. all i was
interested in defining C is the possibility that someone engages in an
activity that s/he is not justifying either in terms of solving problems or
in terms of acting on seeing opportunities to change something unproblematic
but to the better.
having been a skier myself, i know quite well how often i fell, how often i
had to think about not getting into trouble, what effort it took to achieve
that state of entirely intrinsically motivated flow where particular
decisions are not made but lived and can no longer be justified when asked.
on category mistakes, they depend on whose categories you take to be valid
and whose you don't. in my vocabulary, experiences are always related to
behavior. they occupy time. they are experienced, but when you want to
talk about the experiences of others you need to listen to their accounts of
them. there is a difference between your observing someone skiing down a
mountain and your listening to their describing the bliss experienced by
skiing. when you talk of flow, you need both. it is not a logical category
nor a behavioral fact. this is why it doesn't fall into the categories of
A, reactive to perceived problems, or B, proactive consequent to perceived
opportunities, but just doing it.
klaus
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